While I certainly applaud Pup for just fucking off and getting married in private like a normal person (see, Lara Bingle? It’s easy!) I could live without the SMH’s vaguely offensive precis of the newlyweds' achievements:

‘Both husband, 31, and wife, 30, have websites listing their key statistics. He has played 83 Tests, scoring 6097 runs at an average of 48.78. She has a 34B bust, brown/green eyes, and wears size 7½ shoes.’

You’re better than this, Sydney Morning Herald. At least, I’d like to believe you are.

At the age of fourteen I became helplessly and hopelessly smitten with the Beastie Boys.

Their music was the soundtrack to every iota of my adolescence and ensuing fawn-like stumbling into adulthood. I wanted to emulate them, marry them, be them. Everything they professed to admire I would eventually and ill-advisedly try my hand at – including skateboarding at the Prahran bowl and taking my ‘rhyme book’ to hip-hop open mic nights (I am currently thanking baby jebus that camera phones were not around at this time as I would almost certainly have become the inadvertent star of one of those ridiculous viral You Tube clips – ‘Midget Rap Lady’ or somesuch). I procured the heart of my high-school sweetheart in the mosh pit of the 1994 Hordern Pavilion show and snuck into the band’s hotel via the service lift after they played with Helmet at Festival Hall. In New York at age twenty I would look up from a cup of terrible coffee and somehow catch the improbable sight of Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch skateboarding directly past and spend the rest of the trip listening to my then-boyfriend marvelling that he could ‘barely believe that shit…I mean, Beastie Boys! Right there on skateboards! On the streets of New York!’

I met one of my best friends Megan on the dancefloor of a Beastie Boys tribute night at The Club in Collingwood, racing over to her with an awkward, sunshiney grin because she was the only other girl I’d ever met who knew all the words to Paul’s Boutique. We started a zine and clothing label together called B-Grrrl because we thought it would impress the band, and we flyer-bombed every room of the Rydges hotel after Summersault on the off-chance MCA would seek us out.

Eighteen years later I would have my hand on Megan’s pregnant belly in an apartment in Reykjavík as we reminisced about all the tousle-headed Dickies-wearing boys we’d loved in the Beastie Boys' absence, and three days after that conversation Adam Yauch would be dead.

Some time ago I wrote in typically understated show offy fashion about Adam and the many kindnesses he showed me over the years, though I was never anything more to him than just a wide-eyed, blushing idiot in an oversized beanie. He even took me to see Miss Saigon, an unlikely event that would have barely registered a blip on his multi-layered radar but stayed seared on my soul forever like a cattle branded memory.

Adam Yauch was the totem of my wild adolescence. I wish I’d been more eloquent and impressive when we met. I wish I’d saved the answering machine message he left me. I wish I’d been able to put into words how gargantuan a gesture it was on his part to bestow a modicum of affection to someone who adored him so completely and I wish I’d clasped his hands and sung every shred of my goofy soul right into his sweet face.

Mostly I will miss his gigantic heart.

Workshopped but ultimately rejected titles for Justin Bieber’s bestselling fragrance ‘SomeDay’:

Our Secret

It only hurts for a second

LOL

My Jus

Bitch, Please

Cherry Pop

Phart

Respect the Cock

What we are meant to ascertain from The Australian’s piece on Tony Abbott and his lesbian sister.

1. Tony just wants what’s best for all of us!

“I’ve come to the view over the years that the only side you can take is that which tries to maintain relationships. Getting judgmental in ways which damage relationships does no one any good.”

I can’t think of anything more likely to ‘maintain relationships’ than refusing those in a partnership a right to marry the partner of their choice and making them feel like powerless, second-class citizens. People in love adore that kind of thing. HAVING TO GO TO COURT AND PROTEST FOR YOUR RIGHT TO MARRY ONLY MAKES YOU STRONGER/HAPPIER/MORE PRODUCTIVE!

1. Tony has feelings! ALL THE FEELINGS!

‘Unable to reveal the personal dimension to this political fracas, Mr Abbott has been hostage to caricature, with critics lambasting his social conservatism’.

YOU GUYS SRSLY STOP MAKING FUN HE IS TORMENTED AS HE COULDN’T TELL US HIS SISTER WAS A SINNER WHO WILL BURN IN HELL HOMO

1. Tony is a host par excellence!

‘Mr Abbott and his wife, Margie, have welcomed Ms Forster and Ms Edwards to their home as a couple on countless occasions without fanfare or fuss.’

Well I must say that is kind of them. You mean they didn’t greet them at the door holding crosses and shrieking GOD HATES FAG ENABLERS? That’s probably worth a Mardi Gras float or Nobel Peace Prize for starters.

1. Tony shows compassion and support!

‘VOTERS know that Tony Abbott opposes gay marriage but what he hasn’t been able to share with the electorate until now is the compassion and support he’s shown towards his sister, Christine Forster, since she has come out as a gay woman.’

Look, I don’t have a brother, so perhaps I’m ill qualified to ponder what counts as ‘compassion and support’ between siblings. But just say I was gay and I did have a brother who – bear with me here, I’m as unhappy about it as you are – will likely soon be in a very good position to create a new law supporting my rights as a human being. I might assume that the best way he could show me ‘compassion and support’ was by standing by my side and announcing to the world that he and I had the exact same freedom to exist in society and that he would do everything in his power to make this long overdue reform a reality. BROTHERS AND SISTERS, IT’S TIME.

Excuse me for a moment but I happen to not think very much of what is occurring in this picture.

You may be super into this sort of thing and all power to you you mindless douchebag as it takes all types to live on this crazy planet we call Earth and so forth. Racing Minister Denis Napthine* certainly seems to find it very jolly and who can blame him? Death tastes like candy!

In the spirit of 2012 being The Official Year of Armchair Activism™ you can go have a peruse of the issue at the RSPCA website OR if you’re feeling rather fanciful and keen for a chat you can call those responsible for maintaining jumps racing in Victoria and tell them EXCUSE ME PLEASE BUT CAN THIS HIDEOUS EFFING SHIT DRAW TO A CLOSE AROUND ABOUT NOW BEFORE I HAVE TO CRACK SOME SKULLS.

Here are their numbers!

Ted Baillieu: (03) 9651 5000

Denis Napthine: (03) 9095 4170

Racing Victoria: (03) 9258 4258.

*While we’re here, does anybody remember Denis Napthine playing at being a politician in the late 90’s? So sweet, he actually thought he was people!

Oh hello!

I was wondering if you might like to join me for dinner.

*

The thing is, there is a restaurant in Melbourne called Maha that I am reasonably obsessed with, to the point of harassing the head chef Shane Delia with late night texts and what-not, at least until he involved the police and took out an intervention order. Maha do (does?) kickass vegan feasts (and carnivorous ones too but that is neither here nor there at the moment as you are visiting the homepage of a vegan lady and must be respectful) and I have spent many a happy evening making a lavish idiot of myself at their tables.

The other thing is, I have this best mate called Gen who is having a fairly fucking shitty time dealing with cancer. On top of all the physical irritations and annoying hospital visits she is struggling financially and needs all the help she can get.

So the overall thing is that I promised Shane I would stop calling him at two in the morning and demanding his felafel recipes if he would be a kind man and donate some goods and services for Gen and because he is so nice and good looking and emotionally pliable he has contributed Maha’s private dining room and a VEGAN FEAST with drinks to the value of $200 per person for us I KNOW RIGHT. And since I can think of nothing better than combining all my favourite things – food, drink, and being a bit awkward with people I’ve never met – I would like you to come too.

The final things are this:

1. There are thirteen seats available, so whoever books and pays first is IN and everyone else will simply have to sit at home eating a banana and watching Dancing With The Stars.

2. You can express interest (or just email for a chat, I don’t mind) via my contact page.

3. No you may not add lamb chop to your menu, you scamp.

4. This is a specially selected vegan menu designed by Shane Delia and wines matched by the Maha sommelier Darcy Curnow and we should all genuflect in their general direction.

5. Every single dollar raised goes to Gen.

6. If you can’t make it to the dinner – or you turn up your nose at fine dining, to which I say DUDE WHAT IS YOUR BEEF WITH PLEASURE – you can donate to Gen personally and I think that would be a nice thing for you to do.

7. UPDATED: It is two hundred dollars per person.

See you at the table. Bring your manners.

*Please note that our dinner together will not be like the one pictured as my beau will be in attendance and he is mostly quite adequate at keeping me out of mischief. So don’t go getting fresh or David might get in a flap and YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO THERE TRUST ME.

So I am currently in Broome bunkering down in the midst of Cyclone Lua and occasionally yelling idiotic things like BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES and THAR SHE BLOWS much to the disgust of my fellow houseguests.

Yesterday Broome moved from ‘Blue Alert’ to ‘Yellow Alert’ (it’s a cyclone thing) and my feller and I realised that we had to head out and do some survivalist shopping just in case we were trapped in Broome for the next week without power or supplies (I simply cannot write that word without imagining myself jumping out from behind a couch and shouting SUPPLIES!) and ended up gnawing at each others' spindly limbs.

Well. It’s not until you are in a supermarket crowded with quietly panicky people all murmuring about their camp stoves and emergency water supplies that you realise how wholly unequipped you are at cyclone shopping. What on earth are you supposed to buy? Bottled water, yes, that’s a no brainer. But apart from that the only aisles that were really doing business were those that contained tinned Spam (I jest not) and the sort of packet noodles one must mix with butter and boiling water before forcing down their gullets in a gelatinous gulp.

Here, then, is what my flustered, idiot, panicking self (‘We’re going to be trapped in Broome! We’re going to die!’) purchased at my end of the world shop:

• Four packets marinated tofu
• Two tubs roasted garlic hummus
• Two ‘sesame teriyaki’ instant noodles
• Muesli
• Tinned baby corn
• Thai chili dip
• Four carrots
• Two avocadoes
• Rice crackers
• Two small tins of spaghetti
• Cherry tomatoes
• Bonsoy soy milk
• Barbecue Shapes
• Gluten free (vegan!) ‘chicken flavoured’ organic chips
• Beetroot chips
• NW magazine – ‘Skinny and Struggling!!!’
• OK magazine ‘Guy Sebastian – Meet My Son!!’

It would fucking serve me right to die of starvation in the aftermath of a natural disaster, it really would.

‘Remember when we used to hate libraries because they were really boring? Well now they’re really cool – they’ve got the internet, they’ve got games!’ – P. Andre, 2012.

Peter, we didn’t have you down for a bookworm.

I know! I’m the type of person who will see a book and want to read it, but won’t because it will take me a year to get through it. Let’s face it, big books are scary!

Now you’re in love with reading, have you come across any ‘bigger’, more classic books. Anything by Jane Austen for example?

No.

Charles Dickens?

No.

George Orwell?

No.

Plays don’t tend to be as long as books. Have you read anything by Shakespeare?

No.

You must have read some Shakespeare at school?

I just read Mr Men books!

Out of all the books you have read, what is your favourite?

I love The Secret – but that’s a documentary. I love all books that aren’t autobiographies, really.

But you’ve written an autobiography…

Yeah, but have I read anyone else’s? Honestly! No. They’re too big!

Have you ever read your own autobiography?

No, but I wrote it so I know what’s in it. Even my autobiography is a bit big!

Do you have a favourite protagonist?

(Long pause) I don’t know. Do you?

Someone like Elizabeth Bennett

(Long pause) I read a book called A Child Called It. Someone gave it to me because I was going through a pretty tough time. I read it and you would not believe what this boy went through. His story touched me like nothing ever has before. I’ve actually tried emailing the guy three or four times, but he hasn’t gotten back to me.

*

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to National Literary Ambassador and guest lecturer at Oxford University, Peter ‘Mysterious Girl’ Andre. No really.

Interview with UK OK Magazine, Feb 2012.

So if you’ve read my book – don’t be coy, it’s fine if you haven’t, I’m not offended* – you might have seen the story I wrote about one of my best friends and her breast cancer diagnosis. Despite the unbridled hilarity crammed within its pages (‘Trenchant, principled, uncompromising. I laughed, I cried, I came’ – Jason Steger, The Age) the whole experience has been, as you might imagine, fairly fucking heartwrenching and a daily struggle for Gen as she deals with the debilitating aftermath of her ongoing treatments.

Folk are gathering together for a ‘Fun Raiser’ at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne on February 16th and I think it would be just dandy if you came along. If you’re unable to, however, there is STILL SOMETHING YOU CAN DO. A Paypal account has been set up for donations and you may help simply by clicking

HERE.

Gen is hands down the funniest person I know and cancer is hands down the unfunniest fucking thing that could ever happen to anybody ever. If you did happen to read the story in my book and felt any kind of connection, then throw some dollars her way. If you didn’t read the story, take my word for it IT IS VERY GOOD AND YOU WOULD LIKE IT SO MUCH YOU WOULD PLOTZ and throw some dollars her way. I will come around to your house and wash your car and then make you a lasagna wearing only my underpants and an insouciant smile to show my gratitude**.

I love this dame fiercely and nobody can make me laugh with quite the same edge of hysteria.

Thank you for reading.

*You’re dead to me.

**Offer ends midnight (yesterday).

via @lucethoughts, a gal after my own heart.